This Paper explores important shifts in state funding and delivery of education services in a number of countries in Europe and North America. Drawing on comparative welfare state research that tracks state funding and delivery mechanisms and policy feedback effects over time, this paper examines whether and to what extent state "delegation" to a variety of third party actors in education has led to the "displacement" of state authority. It develops measures of education choice to track regulation and governance in order to determine the extent to which third party actors act as agents of state educational authority or as competitors with autonomy in governance and curriculum matters.
